Mobile telecommunications networks enable users of User Equipment (UE) to communicate with other such users via one of a number of base stations and a core network. Each base station defines a number of cells of the network. In an active state a UE is registered with the network and has an RRC (Radio Resource Control) connection with a base station so that the network knows which cell the UE belongs to and can transmit data to and receive data from the UE. In the Long Term Evolution (LTE) of UTRAN (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) referred to as E-UTRAN, in the Active state, the handover procedure allows UEs to have service continuity while moving between LTE cells and when moving to cells of other RATs (Radio Access Technologies), such as UTRAN cells and GERAN cells.
E-UTRAN base stations (referred to as eNBs) are able to handover a UE to another E-UTRAN cell (Inter frequency handover) or to a cell of another RAT (Inter RAT handover) only if the source cell is aware of the existence of the target cell. This information may be configured into the base station. However, due to the cost of doing this and due to the continuous updating of this configuration information, an automatic procedure has been defined in the 3GPP standards documentations (see TS 36.300 V9.0.0). This automatic procedure is referred to as ANR (Automatic Neighbour Relation) and relies on the UEs providing information to the serving base station about cells that they detect. The present invention relates specifically to improving the current ANR proposal for E-UTRAN base stations.